U.s. Cannot Afford To Delay An Arms Reduction Treaty

November 01, 1989|By Lowell E. Sachnoff.

Anyone who looks closely at the official reports of the September meeting at Jackson Hole between Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, or has read Baker`s most recent statement on the need for reduction of first strike weapons, will notice that something important is still missing. With all the talk about nuclear arms reduction, what is striking is the absence of any clear direction to our strategic arms reduction treaty (START) negotiators in Geneva to cement agreements now on the mutual 50 percent reduction in strategic nuclear weapons, promised two years ago at the Reykjavik summit.

At Jackson Hole the Soviets made three important new concessions:

1. To dismantle the controversial radar installation at Krasnoyarsk,

2. To unlink opposition to SDI from a START agreement, and

3. To postpone the thorny problems of sea-launched cruise missiles for separate accord.

With these problems out of the way the Bush administration has no reason to delay reaching prompt agreement of a START. It can be signed and the ratification process begun.

During his final year in office President Reagan said START could be completed in 1988. The talks were scheduled to begin in February of this year, yet they were delayed until July and still no progress has been reported. The Bush administration claims the delay was due to the need for a ``strategic review,`` but this review has produced nothing but a confused compromise proposal of new MX and Midgetman missiles. There are compelling-urgent-reasons why the 50 percent reductions in long range missiles should be done now, and not put off for political or public relations reasons until next summer`s planned summit.

First, it was the threat of a Soviet first strike that defined much of our nation`s cold war nuclear policy for the past 40 years.

A visit earlier this summer by an American delegation to Kryshtym, Russia`s secret ``plutonium city,`` tells us much about our mutual xenophobia with the Soviets and reality of the first strike threat. Kryshtym is the site of the Soviet`s first weapons-grade plutonium plant. At Mikhail Gorbachev`s direction, Kryshtym is now being dismantled, after four decades of plutonium production plagued by colossal operational blunders and costly nuclear incidents.

Several members of Congress and the press toured Kryshtym-the first foreigners to set foot there. Boris Brokhovitch, the 73-year-old director of Russia`s plutonium city, who worked there from its beginning, told the Americans how strange it was to see them there. ``You are the reason we built this place. We thought it was possible you would use the atomic bomb against us,`` he confided. More powerfully than all the ink spilt over MX, Midgetman, Trident, Stealth and SDI combined, Brokhovitch`s simple statement tells why a completed START agreement must be given top priority by the Bush Administration.

Second, it is the delay in reaching agreement of START, that poses the greatest risk to our national security.

It was Gorbachev at Reykjavik who committed his country to an immediate 50 percent reduction in long range missiles. Every day of delay in nailing down this reduction is another day of risk that the soviets will withdraw their offer. If there is a risk that Gorbachev is vulnerble to a coup by reactionary forces, a prompt START agreement would lessen that risk and help bolster his position.

The basic choice is inescapable. Do we want to risk seeing Gorbachev replaced by reactionary leaders who might rekindle the cold war and escalate the nuclear arms race? Or do we want Gorbachev to succeed in making the Soviet Union a more free and open society with a workable economic system?

Third, former Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger was correct when he told Congress that the Soviet threat defines our budget and defense policy.

Reaching a prompt agreement at the START talks will be responsive to the diminished Soviet threat and will confer several benefits on our economy.

We will save the mounting costs, more than $2 billion a year, of maintaining our ICBM force, including older Minuteman II Missiles, in its present redundant size of more than 12,000 missiles. There would be no need to build additional multiple warhead mobile MX missiles, or the single warhead Midgetman that was originally part of the Bush compromise but which Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney has suggested be abandoned.

Our 50 hard siloed MX missiles, each with 10 independently targeted warheads, are viewed by the Soviets as providing us with first strike capability, and they are tempting targets for any possible Soviet attack. The Soviet`s counterpart to the MX is the SS-24, also a 10 warhead missile, and already mobile on rail cars.